jensfandomcom-20200214-history
The Nitty-Gritty of the Greater Sneo-Negrotic Language
Greater Sneo-Negrotic, abbreviated as GSN, is the language of the gods, and therefore it can't be expected for a mere mortal to easily grasp the concepts and complex emotions that it consists of. This article aims to document what the church of Ok knows and understands about it, but not all of it may be correct. The soundifications & orthographifications The phonology of formal GSN not allow consonant clusters, though in the written language, 2 clustered letters are used to geminate, change the quality of, or uvularize a sound. The vowelifications There are 3 main vowels in GSN, 2 of which are written differently when before 'q' (and 'r'). This is done to have a better sound correlation between the spoken and written language, with 'a' remaining unchanged since there is no suitable equivalent letter. These additional vowels should therefore not be considered separate, even though it's possible for a word with a uvular vowel to have a separate meaning, compared to an otherwise identical word with a non-uvular vowel. Vowels can be geminated, written as 2 repeated letters, with pronunciation simply being a longer version of the same sound, with some sounds changing quality. More on that below. 'Od information The consonantifications Below is a consonant table. As shown, words in GSM can only start and end with a limited selection of consonants, where X means true. This truth table is not necessarily correct for contractions, such as final '-nng', short for '-nngilaq'. *'ll' is a different quality of 'l' and can only exist geminated. Same with f, but with 'ff' (vv) and 'rf' (rv). **Technically true, word-final 'i' in a vowel cluster (such as in 'ai') is pronounced as 'j'. ***'t' before 'i' is pronounced 'tˢ', and geminated 't' is 'tˢ:'. Only geminated 't' before 'i' is written 'ts'. This geminated sound is not restricted to preceding 'i', and is found elsewhere, such as in igutsak. ****Reserved for grammatical purposes. Word-final consonants are usually not pronounced unless they're at the end of a sentence, since the phonology of GSN doesn't allow for consonant clusters. 'R' is a degradation of 'q' when a word ending with such is suffixed. Geminates Like vowels, consonants can be geminated to create longer versions of the consonants, some changing quality in the process, in the form of being devoiced. If the consonant can be r-clustered, it is shown below the normally geminated consonant in this table. R-clusters R-clusters occur when weak consonant-initial suffixes are added to a word ending in 'q'. Following the spirit of suffixes degrading the final consonant of the word it is attached to, the 'q' is almost degraded fully like 'k', and carries over to the suffix's initial consonant, geminating it. But unlike 'k', 'q', now 'r', retains the uvular aspect it gives the vowel before it, even when not present anymore. If the affix starts with a vowel or a geminated consonant, it fully replaces the final 'q' instead of making an r-cluster. An exception is made for strong roots, like '-'neq: -neq + -u = 'ajor'ner'''unngilaq'. Sample words, inflection and suffix demonstration Inflection of nouns and verbs can be explored using the word-building tool provided by oqaaserpassualeriffik, requiring noun and verb stems to build on. Examples of such are listed below, with inflection and suffixing examples. They also have a word-analyzer, which will break down the words into their separate components. Neither are perfect, however, and not all words will be recognized or generated correctly Most inflections here are copied results recieved from the word-building tool, so only basic inflection is used to ensure authenticity. The morphological rules of affixes can vary substantially, and there have been developed standards for describing this behavior, such as in the weak geminated affix -:lluaq, and the strong short affix -koq. This is not represented in this article (at least not at this time), where only a hyphen (-) is used. Nouns Nouns. along with regular suffixes, have cases, which describe basic concepts such as being in, coming towards, away from, through, or having the qualities of the preceding noun. This is common in the world's languages, and can be particularly alikened to the same system in finnic languages, such as finnish. Cases, which the plural can be grouped together with, may trigger consonant gemination in the second to last consonant of a word, or cause irregular inflection, as seen in this table. Nouns are not the same in english, where there are uncountable (mass) and countable (object) nouns. A word that is an uncountable mass noun, like 'snow', would refer to a glob of snow in GSN, which is countable. *Irregular noun. Noun affixes Affixes come in many shapes and sizes. Some have seemingly unique morphological properties, while others are generic and predictable in that regard. Affixes that are not cases can be divided into four simple groups: V>V, V>N, N>N, N>V, where V is verb, and N is noun, and the arrow signifies whether the type of the resultant word is a noun or a verb. *Weak geminated affix, uvularizes if the word it's attached to ends in a vowel. Verbs Verbs create a challenge for language documentation, as roots can not stand alone in the language, and final consonants are either dropped or merged into the affix's initial consonant, thus putting non-'q'-final words in a difficult situation, where -k and -t are indistinguishable. A compromise that doesn't involve using historical data from before words merged in this way, or from cognate words in other languages, involves writing final 'k' or 't' as 'p'. Oqaaserpassualeriffik's word generator only accepts verb roots formatted this way. Nouns are often used as verbs, though the verb needs to be in common usage or have a clear purpose for the meaning to be properly conveyed; such as allap, from allak, meaning pattern or line. Verb affixes Verbs, unlike nouns, can not stand alone, and are required to have at least 1 affix. If it's not an affix that turns the verb into a noun, it's a personal ending. Sentence examples These samples are taken from AJUNNGILA ?, a holy film that has contributed immensely to the church of Ok's understanding of the language. They usually give me 100 kroner. -tar is a short weak suffix, and thus the 't' degrades to an 's' when affixed to a vowel. As/when I'm playing, I always see my mom and dad. The -lunga affix is described as "infinitive" in documentation. Why this is, is a mystery, as it is completely unlike the infinitive word case in languages like english, such as in 'to play'. The church of Ok assumes this to be a mistake, and that changing it would be too much of a hassle. My mom (, she) usually throws things at me. This sentence demonstrates the use of the agentive case, which signifies that the noun it's attached to is the doer of the action. I shit on the balls of your dead ones. This sentence was created by the Tukology head of research, after an exhaustive session of copying words from the word generator, and as such, it may not be 100% gramatically correct. The demise and resurgence of Oqaaserpassualeriffik Towards the final months of the year of our lord, 2016, Oqaaserpassualeriffik shut down after not having the domain renewed. After a while, it was discovered that the site had simply relocated to a subdomain of the GSN secretariat, tech.oqaasileriffik.gl. The old domain, oqaaserpassualeriffik.org, is now a mess of redirects and malware. Refer to the link list below for the new domain. Some links on the rehosted oqaaserpassualeriffik still lead to the old site, and it is therefore advised that the links are checked before visiting them Links Well good documentation - Look for West Greenlandic/Kalaallisut. Recent material is suaqly recommended (like Jerrold M. Sadock's). http://groenlandskgrammatik.dk - The best documentation for the language, but in danish. The writer of this article apologizes immensely for linking this disgrace. http://learngreenlandic.tumblr.com - Small courses and miscellaneous posts about Grønland. https://tech.oqaasileriffik.gl/tools/lookdown - Word generator. https://tech.oqaasileriffik.gl/tools/lookup - Word disassembler, can also be used as a spellchecker. http://eskimo-land.blogspot.com - More noun roots in both Greater Sneo-Negrotic and Healthcare Sneo-Negrotic, with illustrations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenlandic_language - A less kræftisut source of information, though in less detail. AJUNNGILA ? - Sample sentences taken from here.